DebateGate

Killer cow emissions

Livestock are a leading source of greenhouse gases. Why isn't anyone raising a stink?
October 15, 2007

It's a silent but deadly source of greenhouse gases that contributes more to global warming than the entire world transportation sector, yet politicians almost never discuss it, and environmental lobbyists and other green activist groups seem unaware of its existence.

That may be because it's tough to take cow flatulence seriously. But livestock emissions are no joke.

Most of the national debate about global warming centers on carbon dioxide, the world's most abundant greenhouse gas, and its major sources -- fossil fuels. Seldom mentioned is that cows and other ruminants, such as sheep and goats, are walking gas factories that take in fodder and put out methane and nitrous oxide, two greenhouse gases that are far more efficient at trapping heat than carbon dioxide. Methane, with 21 times the warming potential of CO2, comes from both ends of a cow, but mostly the front. Frat boys have nothing on bovines, as it's estimated that a single cow can belch out anywhere from 25 to 130 gallons of methane a day.

It isn't just the gas they pass that makes livestock troublesome. A report from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization identified livestock as one of the two or three top contributors to the world's most serious environmental problems, including water pollution and species loss. In terms of climate change, livestock are a threat not only because of the gases coming from their stomachs and manure but because of deforestation, as land is cleared to make way for pastures, and the amount of energy needed to produce the crops that feed the animals.

All told, livestock are responsible for 18% of greenhouse-gas emissions worldwide, according to the U.N. -- more than all the planes, trains and automobiles on the planet. And it's going to get a lot worse. As living standards rise in the developing world, so does its fondness for meat and dairy. Annual per-capita meat consumption in developing countries doubled from 31 pounds in 1980 to 62 pounds in 2002, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization, which expects global meat production to more than double by 2050. That means the environmental damage of ranching would have to be cut in half just to keep emissions at their current, dangerous level.

It isn't enough to improve mileage standards or crack down on diesel truck emissions, as politicians at both the state and national levels are working to do. Eventually, the United States and other countries are going to have to clean up their agricultural practices, while consumers can do their part by cutting back on red meat.

Manure, methane and McGovern

In a Web forum for presidential candidates in September, TV talk-show host Bill Maher asked former Sen. John Edwards a snarky question: Because Edwards had suggested that people trade in their SUVs to benefit the environment, and cattle generate more greenhouse gases than SUVs, "You want to take a shot at meat?" Maher asked.

Edwards wisely dodged the question. It is extremely hazardous for politicians to take on the U.S. beef industry, a lesson learned by Sen. George McGovern in the late 1970s when his Select Committee on Nutrition dared to recommend that Americans cut down on red meat and fatty dairy products for health reasons. After a ferocious lobbying blitz from meat and dairy interests, the committee rewrote its guidelines to suggest diners simply choose lean meats that "will reduce saturated fat intake." McGovern was voted out of office in 1980, in part because of opposition from cattlemen in his home state of South Dakota.

Beyond the dangers of taking on the beef bloc, legislating food choices is an unpopular and nearly impossible task, so it's unlikely any candidate will endorse a national vegetarian movement to fight global warming any time soon. There are other approaches, though.

Cows and other ruminants have four stomachs, the first of which, called the rumen, is where the trouble lies; bacteria in the rumen produce methane. Scientists -- mostly in Australia, New Zealand and Britain, where the problem is taken a lot more seriously than it is here -- are working on a variety of technical solutions, including a kind of bovine Alka-Seltzer. Scientists are also trying to develop new varieties of feed grasses that are more energy efficient and thus generate less methane, and they are experimenting with targeted breeding to produce a less-gassy strain of cattle.

But it's not just about the belching. Livestock manure also emits methane (especially when it's stored in lagoons) and nitrous oxide, better known as laughing gas. There's nothing funny about this gas: It has 296 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide, and livestock are its leading anthropogenic (human-caused) source. The best way to reduce these gases is to better manage the manure; storage methods and temperature can make a big difference. The California Air Resources Board is studying manure-management practices as part of a sweeping effort to identify ways of cutting greenhouse-gas emissions, work that by the end of next year might lead to regulation of the state's ranches and dairies. Other states should do the same.

There are also smart ways of treating or converting animal waste. Manure lagoons can be covered, capturing gases that can be used to generate power or simply be burned away (burning the gases converts most of the emissions to CO2, which is far less destructive than methane). That's the strategy being pursued by American Electric Power Co., a gigantic utility based in Columbus, Ohio, whose coal-fired power plants make it the nation's biggest emitter of carbon dioxide. This summer, the company began putting tarps on waste lagoons at farms and ranches and sending the gases they capture to flares.

American Electric is under heavy regulatory pressure. Last week, it was on the wrong end of the biggest environmental settlement in U.S. history and agreed to spend up to $4.6 billion to clean up its smokestacks. Its work on manure is part of an experiment in carbon offsets; the company anticipates that someday Congress will cap the amount of carbon dioxide that can be emitted and allow polluters to trade pollution credits. As a previous installment of this series noted, that's a less effective way to combat global warming than carbon taxes, but the American Electric example shows that it would also direct the economic might of industrial polluters toward solving off-the-beaten-path problems such as livestock waste.

Other possible solutions include providing more aid to ranchers in places like Brazil, where forests are rapidly disappearing, to make cattle operations more efficient and thus decrease the need to cut down trees. Changes in farming practices on fields used to grow livestock feed could help capture more carbon. And U.S. agricultural policy is overdue for changes. Subsidies on crops such as corn and soybeans have traditionally kept the price of meat artificially low because these are key feedstocks.

Broccoli: It's what's for dinner

Such policy shifts and new technologies would help, but probably not enough. A recent report in the Lancet led by Australian National University professor Anthony J. McMichael posits that available technologies applied universally could reduce non-carbon dioxide emissions from livestock by less than 20%. The authors advocate another, fringe approach that has long been embraced by dietitians and vegans but is a long way from going mainstream in the United States: eating less meat.

Americans love beef. According to the 2000 census, the U.S. ranks No. 3 in the world in per-capita consumption of beef and veal (after Argentina and Uruguay), gorging on 100 pounds per year. We're also among the leaders in obesity, heart disease and colorectal cancer, and there is a connection -- fatty red meat has been linked to all of these conditions.

McMichael's idea isn't likely to gain much traction outside Australia; he proposes that developed countries lower their daily intake of meat from about 250 grams to 90 grams, with no more than 50 grams coming from ruminant animals -- that's less than 2 ounces, or half a McDonald's Quarter-Pounder.

Still, as evidence mounts that cutting back on beef would both improve our health and help stave off global warming, a campaign urging people to do so is clearly in order. It's understandable why political candidates are wary of bashing beef, but less understandable why environmental leaders with nothing to lose are reluctant to raise the issue. They would be more credible in targeting polluters if they were equally assertive in pointing out what all Americans can do to fight global warming, and at the very top of that list -- way ahead of more commonly mentioned approaches such as buying fluorescent lightbulbs or energy-efficient appliances -- would be eating less red meat.

A University of Chicago study examined the average American diet and found that all the various energy inputs and livestock emissions involved in its production pump an extra 1.5 tons of CO2 into the air over the course of a year, which would be avoided by a vegetarian diet. Thus, the researchers found, cutting out meat would do more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions than trading in a gas guzzler for a hybrid car.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture assesses ranchers, dairymen and producers of other commodities to pay for marketing campaigns to promote their products, raising millions of dollars a year and turning such slogans as "Got Milk?" and "Beef: It's What's for Dinner" into national catchphrases. This isn't quite tantamount to a government-mandated campaign to promote cigarette smoking, but it's close. The government should not only get out of the business of promoting unhealthful and environmentally destructive foods, it should be actively discouraging them.


http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-methane15oct15,0,1365993.story?coll=la-opinion-leftrail

Martin Amis in fresh attack on Islamists
By Nigel Reynolds
12/10/2007



The novelist Martin Amis renewed his attack on militant Islam last night, calling it a "poisonous death cult" and "a murderous ideology".
 
Undeterred by the recent attack on him by the Marxist academic Terry Eagleton, who compared Amis's views to those of a "British Nationalist Party thug", the novelist was critical of Western liberals who did not condemn outright an extreme idology that, he said, sought to murder apostates and beat women.

Amis said that some in the West could not or would not see that extreme Islam was "an armed doctrine that radically reduced the value of human life".

Taking part in a discussion in London at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, the author of novels including London Fields and Money said that moderate Muslims who failed to take on extremists "tacitly legitimise the extreme position".

Amis compared Islamic fundamentalism to Naziism, Trotskyism and Maoism and said that he feared the West was in for a long war against al-Qa'eda.

He said of suicide bombing: "It's a pathetic spiritual act. It signifies nothing and it's done for vulgar gain. It is the most disgusting sophistry."

The author declined to respond to a question about Professor Eagleton's attack on him.

The Marxist critic also described the novelist's father, the late Sir Kingsley Amis, as "a racist, anti-Semitic boor, a drink-sodden, self-hating reviler of women, gays and liberals".

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/12/nterror512.xml

Students in Tehran lash out at Ahmadinejad

By Ramin Mostaghim, Special to The Times
8:04 AM PDT, October 8, 2007



(An Iranian student tries to kick open a gate as riot police stand on the other side on the campus of Tehran University, where students staged a noisy protest against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad)

TEHRAN -- Dozens of students opposed to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's human rights record confronted the leader and his supporters today at the country's most prestigious university.

The students, defying a broad government crackdown on dissent, accused Ahmadinejad of corruption and discrimination and chanted "death to the dictator."

The president came to the campus to inaugurate the academic year, just two weeks after his controversial visit to Columbia University in New York. He was flanked by the head of the university and the minister of science. Black-shirted Basiji militia members shouted in support of Ahmadinejad. "Our president, thank you, thank you," they said.

Ahmadinejad, reviled in the West for denying the Holocaust and calling for the destruction of Israel, cuts a divisive figure at home. His government has tolerated little dissent, arresting students, purging free-thinking professors and cracking down on young men and women wearing Western-style clothing.

"You, Mr. Ahmadinejad, claimed at Columbia University that there is freedom of speech in Iran's universities," one student said over a megaphone. "Then why are three students still in jail?"

Pro-Ahmadinejad students called the protesters sellouts beholden to the United States. "Death to the hypocrites," they shouted.

Scholars awarded Ahmadinejad a citation for defending Iran in his New York visit.

About 50 students from each side participated in the demonstrations. Others came to complain about the university's lack of facilities, including a shortage of dormitory space and poor Internet connections.

"I am here out of curiosity," said Ali, a graduate student in sociology who asked not to publish his last name. "I hate politics. I think in Iran you cannot live up to your own potential, and there are no good prospects for jobs. I am applying for further education in Europe or the U.S., where I can go and live in a way that I think is right."

Clinton's Brother Settles Debt Suit
By TRAVIS LOLLER ? Sep 13, 2007

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) ? A lawsuit accusing Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton's brother of failing to repay debts to a Tennessee carnival operator has been settled.

Tony Rodham was accused of failing to repay $107,000 plus interest to the bankrupt estate of Edgar Allen Gregory Jr. and his wife, Vonna Jo, both of whom received a presidential pardon in 2000.

The case was scheduled to go to trial on Thursday, but the parties reached a settlement agreement, said Rodham attorney Samuel Crocker. The terms were not disclosed.

Rodham had claimed in court documents the money he received from the Gregorys was for consulting services, but the trustee for the Gregory estate said it was a loan.

The Gregorys received pardons for a bank fraud conviction from President Clinton about two years after Rodham became a paid consultant to United Shows of America, a carnival business the couple owned.

Rodham has said he talked to his brother-in-law about the pardon, but he said President Clinton made the decision to grant clemency on the merits of their case.

After President Clinton left office, the Republican-controlled House Committee on Government Reform found that United Shows paid Rodham $240,000 for undocumented consulting services and that President Clinton was interested in the pardons solely because of his contacts with Rodham.

Hillary Clinton, a New York senator, has said her brother was not paid for his help with the Gregorys' pardon.

Another brother, Hugh Rodham, was paid more than $400,000 for his successful efforts to win pardons for a businessman under investigation for money laundering and a commutation for a convicted drug trafficker. He eventually returned the money at his sister's request.

In the closing hours of his presidency, Bill Clinton pardoned 140 people, including billionaire financier Marc Rich, who fled the United States in 1983 rather than face charges of tax evasion, fraud and making illegal oil deals with Iran.

Rich's ex-wife, songwriter Denise Rich, contributed $450,000 to the Clinton presidential library project, $1.1 million to the Democratic Party and at least $109,000 to Hillary Clinton's bid for the Senate.

Hillary Clinton, who has been critical of President Bush's decision to commute the sentence of former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, said her husband's pardons were simply a routine exercise in the use of the pardon power, and none was aimed at protecting the Clinton presidency or legacy.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gr64jct7Sq4xcHQUUhBm_EqbFJ1Q

US amphibious dock landing ship USS Whidbey Island
deploys to Fifth Fleet headquartered in Bahrain



October 3, 2007, 9:50 PM (GMT+02:00)

The vessel departed Oct. 1 on its mission in the Fifth Fleet area of command,
which encompasses the Persian Gulf, Gulf of Aden, Red Sea, Gulf of Oman,
Arabian Sea and part of the Indian Ocean. On the decks of the Whidbey Island
are a crew of more than 400 sailors, 500 marines and four air cushion landing craft.



http://www.wtkr.com/Global/story.asp?S=7151178&nav=ZolHbyvj

Iraqi Deaths Fall by 50 Percent
By STEVEN R. HURST ? 3 hours ago

BAGHDAD (AP) ? The number of American troops and Iraqi civilians killed in the war fell in September to levels not seen in more than a year. The U.S. military said the lower count was at least partly a result of new strategies and 30,000 additional U.S. forces deployed this year.

Although it is difficult to draw conclusions from a single month's tally, the figures could suggest U.S.-led forces are making headway against extremist factions and disrupting their ability to strike back.

The U.S. military toll for September was 64, the lowest since July 2006, according to figures compiled by The Associated Press from death announcements by the American command and Pentagon.

More dramatic, however, was the decline in Iraqi civilian, police and military deaths. The figure was 988 in September ? 50 percent lower than the previous month and the lowest tally since June 2006, when 847 Iraqis died.

The Iraqi death count is considered a minimum based on AP reporting. The actual number is likely higher, as many killings go unreported.

Nevertheless, the heartening numbers emerged just three weeks after U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and commander Gen. David Petraeus argued before a divided Congress that more time was needed for Iraq to begin seeing results from President Bush's dispatch of an additional 30,000 forces to pacify Baghdad and surrounding regions.

On Monday they issued an unusual joint statement to the Iraqi people that credited them for the decline in violence.

"We must maintain the momentum that together we have achieved. We are confident that you and your fellow citizens will continue to display determination, that Iraqi security forces will remain vigilant and that additional Iraqis will join our combined effort," they said.

Their message opened with greetings to the Iraqi people during the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims focus on their spiritual lives and fast from dawn to dusk.

"Please know that we remain absolutely committed to this effort. ... Much work lies ahead of us. Despite the challenges, we can, together, achieve success," the two men wrote in the statement signed and dated by each.

Of particular note, the message referred to anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr by his honorific, Sayyid Muqtada. Sayyid is a title designating a religious figure as a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad.

"We also sincerely hope that the cease-fire declared by the Sayyid Muqtada will continue to be observed and be further extended to all members of Jaysh al-Mahdi (Arabic for Mahdi Army)," Crocker and Petraeus wrote.

After a violent confrontation between the Mahdi Army and guards at a religious shrine in the holy city of Karbala in August, al-Sadr said he was standing down his fighters for six months to reorganize.

Col. Steven Boylan, spokesman for Petraeus, said there was "no silver bullet or one thing" responsible for the declining death tolls. But he credited increased U.S. troop strength, saying that had allowed American forces to step up operations against al-Qaida in Iraq and other insurgent and militia fighters.

Anthony H. Cordesman, former director of intelligence assessment at the Pentagon and analyst with the private Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said the decline in violent deaths was a positive trend that does seem to be related to the increase in U.S. forces. But he said it was too early to know if it will last.

"We tend to focus too much on killing rather than wounded, on extreme acts of violence rather than patterns of displacement or ethnic cleansing." He said that when looking at overall stability in Iraq, killings are only one measure.

"This is, I think one of the great difficulties. It's a very complex pattern of fighting and people look for simple statistical bottom lines rather the overall pattern," he said.

"You know you've won when you've won, not when you get the first set of positive indicators," he said.

While civilian deaths were sharply lower last month, Baghdad remained the center of violence in percentage terms. For this year, 54 percent of all sectarian killings occurred in the capital and suburbs. That figure declined to just above 49 percent in September. For the year, the next two most violent regions were the provinces of Diyala and Nineveh.

The number of civilian deaths in Baghdad, 487, also far outstripped any other region in September. Next highest was Diyala province, an al-Qaida sanctuary immediately north and east of the capital, where 124 civilians were killed.

AP tallies civilian, Iraqi military and Iraqi police deaths each day as reported by police, hospital officials, morgue workers and verifiable witness accounts. The security personnel include Iraqi military, police and police recruits, and bodyguards. Insurgent deaths are not included.

In the latest U.S. deaths, the military reported that an American soldier was killed and 10 were wounded Monday in combat operations in central Baghdad. The same day, a soldier was killed and another was wounded in a non-combat accident in Qadisiyah province.

In Washington, Senator Joseph Biden issued a statement clarifying what he said were misconceptions about a nonbinding Senate resolution that passed last week under his cosponsorship.

The resolution calls on the Bush administration to encourage the Iraqi government and parliament to adhere to the country's constitution, which lays out a plan for a loose confederation of regions under a limited central government, leaving the bulk of power with the regions.

"Since then, some political leaders in Iraq have misunderstood the amendment. Instead of working to clear up any misunderstandings about the Senate amendment, the U.S. embassy in Baghdad issued a statement that dangerously mischaracterizes it," said Biden.

He said the amendment, co-sponsored by Republican Senator Sam Brownback, "does not call for the partition of Iraq. To the contrary, it calls for keeping Iraq together by bringing to life the federal system enshrined in its constitution.

"Partition, or the complete break-up of Iraq, is something wholly different than federalism. A federal Iraq is a united Iraq, but one in which power is devolved to regional governments with a limited central government responsible for protecting Iraq's borders and oil distribution.

"It leaves the door open for stronger unity if and when passions cool, as we're seeing in the Balkans. Nor does the amendment call for dividing Iraq along sectarian lines," Biden said, adding that the resolution only calls for Iraqis to implement their constitution.

The U.S. Embassy joined a broad swath of Iraqi politicians ? both Shiite and Sunni ? in criticizing the resolution, seen here as a recipe for splitting the country along sectarian and ethnic lines.

Biden contested the Embassy's assertion that the resolution could lead to "bloodshed and suffering" in Iraq and charged the Bush administration was "pursuing a fatally flawed policy in trying to create a strong central government in Iraq." Biden is a Democratic candidate for president; Brownback is seeking the Republican nomination.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gkx-3oYeFwuWKCusr2jrojs98w8wD8S0N1EG0